Split Vote on Aid a Stinging Defeat for the President

The split congressional vote Tuesday on aid for Nicaraguan rebels was a stinging foreign policy defeat for President Reagan, who had invested tremendous time and energy to send a clear signal of U.S. support for the rebels to Central America.

Instead, Congress gave him a picture of deadlock and paralysis--and left U.S. policy on Nicaragua in temporary limbo.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted to approve the President’s request for $14 million in aid to the rebels, known as contras, by a close vote of 53 to 46. But the Democratic-led House, ignoring a last-minute presidential appeal for a “bipartisan consensus on this critical issue,” turned down the request by a vote of 248 to 180.

That 68-vote House margin was larger than the 23-vote gap some officials said they faced when the Administration’s intensive lobbying campaign began two weeks ago.

Administration officials said they will continue to seek House agreement on some form of contra aid, maintain U.S. political support for the rebels and consider new ways to put pressure on Nicaragua’s Marxist-led regime.

And they said the contras will survive and continue fighting, as they have since Congress cut off their U.S. funding last year. But they acknowledged that the House vote was a serious reversal.

“Few votes will ever be so important to the national security of the United States,” Reagan warned last week. “A vote against our proposal . . . would hasten the consolidation of Nicaragua as a Communist-terrorist arsenal.”

A few hours before Congress voted, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the lawmakers’ action would not only set U.S. policy on Nicaragua but also “has much broader implications.”

“It is really about whether or not the United States will support people who want to advocate and fight for . . . democracy and freedom,” said Shultz, who has argued in favor of covert U.S. aid to anti-communist guerrilla movements all over the world.

In the last hours of the debate, Reagan made several concessions to the Democrats, pledging not to use any of the aid to buy weapons and offering to reopen talks with the Sandinistas--all in hope of winning a stronger “signal” that the United States is committed to backing the contras as rivals to the Sandinistas’ power.

But Democratic leaders made it clear that they voted against the proposal precisely because they do not believe U.S. policy should center on the contras.

‘Non-Military Steps’

“There are tough non-military steps we could take against Nicaragua that we have not taken,” said Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “There is a better way to deal with our problems in Nicaragua than by fighting this nasty little war.”

The result was a mixed signal--a demonstration that there is still no national consensus on what to do about Nicaragua.

“This leaves us in a kind of semi-paralysis,” a State Department official said. “The Sandinistas know it isn’t all over and they know that there are still things the Administration can do to them. But they will be emboldened by this. They have done little or nothing to meet our concerns, but they’re not paying any price in Congress for it.”

Many Democrats believed that the Administration has set an unreasonable goal in seeking to force the Sandinistas to relinquish power. “If the United States remains committed to overthrowing the Sandinistas, the contras cannot do it alone,” warned Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). “Sooner or later, the President will either abandon them to defeat or send in American military force.”

Political Solution Sought

Administration officials reject both of those alternatives and say their goal is a political solution in which the Sandinistas would allow the contras to run in free elections. But the Sandinistas have refused the contras’ demand for negotiations leading toward new elections.

As a result, the prospect is of continuing, but inconclusive, guerrilla war by the contras, who have stayed alive on contributions from the governments of El Salvador and Honduras as well as private citizens in both the United States and Latin America.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after meeting with Shultz that he expects the Administration “to try to make certain that (the) resistance continues,” but added: “Not with taxpayers’ money.”

Administration officials already have said they will make another request for military aid to the contras this fall, in the shape of a $28-million item in the CIA budget for the U.S. fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, they have said that the United States will seek other ways to turn up its pressure on the Sandinistas. On Tuesday, as part of his final proposal to the Senate, Reagan said that he “will favorably consider” economic sanctions against Nicaragua, which relies heavily on trade with the United States, despite the two countries’ five years of conflict.

Concessions Too Late

The President’s last-minute offer of concessions appeared too late to change many votes. Throughout their lobbying campaign, Reagan and other Administration officials relied largely on high-pressure, confrontational appeals, calling the contras “moral equals of our Founding Fathers” and all but accusing Democrats of favoring a Soviet takeover of Central America--a strategy some officials questioned.

“It didn’t work,” one White House official said. “We should have stuck to our call for negotiations between the Sandinistas and the contras . . . and not let the aid become the issue.”

The White House also blundered by claiming that Pope John Paul II and Mexican and Colombian leaders supported aid to the contras--claims that were denied by the Vatican and the Latin countries. “They should have known better, but the tone of the operation was pretty frantic,” a State Department official said. “It didn’t help our credibility.”

Problems of credibility--charges that the Administration has not been fully truthful about its aims and actions--have consistently dogged Reagan’s policy on Central America. Even the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), derided the President’s initial proposal for “humanitarian” aid to the contras as “an apple with a razor blade in it.”

Roll calls of Senate and House votes. Page 19.